Talk:Constitution class model (retcon)
Retcon? Do we really have to call this a Constitution class retcon? That punishment really doesn't fit the crime. Not even taking into account the fact that there were 3 designs used during TOS, this is simply on par with being the 4th variation of the same design...and should be excused just as well as we have for all the variants of Nebula and Miranda class ships or even TNG v. VOY Borg cubes. --Alan (talk) 20:11, March 9, 2019 (UTC) :I'm treating it as the producers intended, even though they have only retconned "The Cage" as far as I know. This isn't a tweak to a model/design so much as it is an intentionally different take on the classic ship, like the alternate reality versions. I also figure it would help people if these images were easier to find in the categories. - 22:34, March 10, 2019 (UTC) How is this different than our current practice of ignoring different actors playing the same character? The retcon designator steps further into the real world scope than say, alternate reality does. --Alan (talk) 23:00, March 10, 2019 (UTC) :We can start with we have never done that before for ships, and in fact have in-universe detailed every single difference. This also isn't an in-universe name, it's purely a real world way to differentiate between the designs. - 23:17, March 10, 2019 (UTC) Understood, but then why not differentiate them with the same nomenclature we already use for the corresponding (parent) studio model pages, TOS studio models, Film studio models, DIS studio models pages, which ties back into the revert you didn't explain of my editon the subject. --Alan (talk) 01:52, March 11, 2019 (UTC) :This is an intentional retcon of the model, and the producers have been pretty clear about that. I don't see a reason to not use that term. I'm also opposed to using the series as a disambiguation for this though since there is no reason to assume that only DIS will use this model. We have at least 2 other series we know are set around this time and if they every have a Constitution class ship in them, I would expect them to use this version of it. The title is both direct as to why it isn't the other versions and vague enough to not be an issue if the upcoming animated ST episodes are all about the Enterprise while it was offscreen in DIS. Since there are more series in production now then ever before, I think we should try to not box ourselves into avoidable issues later by being as "directly vague" as we can be. Name changes from unnecessarily vague to something more precise should be much easier than from incorrectly but used for years precise to necessarily vague. - 03:19, March 11, 2019 (UTC) Name Forgive me if this is being discussed elsewhere; I only just now had this article pointed out to me after adding a bunch of background info about this configuration to the ''Constitution'' class page, and receiving the suggestion that it should be here instead. (To which I have no objection, but I'll have to leave that for another day of editing, unless someone beats me to it...which would of course be fine by me.) Being a RW article, is there some reason we don't just call this "Constitution class model (Star Trek Discovery)" or similar? It's rather ambiguous as to how much of a retcon it's actually intended to be, in terms of what's been presented onscreen (unless tonight's finale alters that, of course). Comments from its designers suggest they meant it as a previous refit of the ship relative to the TOS series version, in-universe. Ted Sullivan's Twitter comment about the Defiant being "modified by Terrans" seems to fall along similar lines, and the dialogue of itself explicitly mentions the (unseen) Cooper-Prime undergoing a refit. may muddy the waters by utilizing footage from "The Cage" in combination with a shot of the series version, but I wouldn't necessarily view that as dispositive for our purposes here (particularly as TOS constantly mixed stock shots as well). Not that the designers' word is either, especially since the VFX team continued to tweak the design after they submitted it, but I'm not aware of any statement made by production personnel anywhere that directly and definitively suggests this iteration retroactively replaces all three of the configurations seen in TOS and elsewhere. (Can anybody point one out, if I've missed it?) Sources such as the Okudas' Chronology have long posited a "major refit" in between Pike and Kirk's tenures (as a rationalization for both the changes made to the filming model between pilots and the increase in crew size from 203 to 430). I'm of course ignoring the size "issue" here; ship sizes have always been "cheated" in Trek as needed, and the TOS Enterprise itself was at various points envisioned as anything from a puny 200ft (per a memo reproduced in The Making Of Star Trek, p. 89) to something that had a saucer "twenty stories thick" and a shuttle bay "large enough to hangar a whole fleet of today's jet liners" (per early iterations of the TOS writer's guide). Moreover, Doug Drexler's cutaway used in (which he even consulted with Jefferies in creating) scaled up the ship to 433m to fit everything in, which isn't that far off from the 442m size they're going with in DSC. Until/unless they actually show the Enterprise during Kirk's time, I'd say the breadth of this "retcon" is largely in the eye of the beholder, a matter of interpretation. --Side Rat (talk) 13:16, April 18, 2019 (UTC) : See: above. --Alan (talk) 13:32, April 18, 2019 (UTC) :::I moved the discussion here for easier reference, and since this page is more visible than the image category. - 23:40, April 18, 2019 (UTC)